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On September 1, Hazon and the Forward are launching an exciting new partnership on The Jew & The Carrot.

During this launch please note:

Archives – we are in the process of archiving the last 3 ½ years of posts. In a few weeks you will be able to find all your favorite old posts about Jews, food, and sustainability. For now, old posts may be accessed here.

On Rosh Hashanah we are asked to reflect on two thoughts, the year that came before and the year to come. As wine lovers, we hold these same thoughts in our glass. 5771 is shaping up to be a wonderful year, with exciting new releases from some of our favorite wine regions: Australia, California, Israel and Italy. As you finalize your guest list and prepare your menu, joyofkosher highlights several new wines for the new year that would feel right at home on your holiday table!

The massive egg recall has made many of us stop and think about how many eggs we use and, for some, questioning our use of them at all. According to the New York Times, “A Hen’s Space to Roost” Sunday August 15; 97 per cent of all eggs consumed in the USA are from hens raised in battery cages, six birds to a cage allowing 67 square inches for each hen for her entire life.

The Jew & The Carrot is going through a really exciting transition and we wanted to let you know about it. On September 1, Hazon and the Forward will partner on The Jew & The Carrot in order to strengthen the depth and expand the breadth of the blog as THE site for Jews, food, contemporary life and the Jewish Food Movement. The Jew and the Carrot will migrate to the Forward’s website and will join its team of blogs, which are read by tens of thousands of readers each month.

About a year ago, a friend of mine got interested in the raw food movement. Raw foodists prefer their food, as advertised, raw. Uncooked. She said it changed her life. OK, lots of people say stuff like that. But I have to admit that I see the difference – she is more relaxed, and brimming with beauty and energy. Four kids? No problem!

Tomorrow night on the Food Network, Amanda Cohen will become the first vegetarian chef to compete on Iron Chef America. After seeing an episode of Top Chef last year in which chefs had to make a vegan dish for guest Natalie Portman, I can see that the combination of a vegetarian and a reality cooking show is going to make for good television!

Here’s what I wrote about Cohen after she was named as one of the Heeb100 in 2009:

As I mentioned in my previous post, “If you’re looking for a kosher establishment with plentiful vegetarian and vegan options, there’s no need to check both vegan and kosher restaurant guides when you can check only one list.”

Though media coverage of the flooding in Pakistan is far less robust than the coverage of the Haiti earthquake, there’s been somerecentbuzz in the blogosphere. In assessing Pakistan’s crisis, many bloggers have asked some version of the question “Why is no one helping?”

It’s now been seven weeks backpacking through this meat-lovers paradise, tough going for a pair of Jews spoiled by home cooking and New York’s great vegetarian restaurants. Vegetarian cuisine in Peru and Bolivia is, like their economies, ‘developing.’ We were pleasantly surprised at the number of vegetarian restaurants in Lima, Arequipa and Cusco. In many of them we had a set menu consisting of a soup, a main, tea and possibly desert for $1.50-$5. Now it could be that South American vegetarian cuisine is relatively immature, or did the Spaniards run off with all the Inca’s seasoning as well as their gold… because all most all of our Andean meals were quite bland. The vegetables or grain soups would have been enlivened by adding almost anything. The mains usually consisted of rice, eggs and glisteningly oily fried vegetables. Most of the vegetarian restaurants rely heavily on eggs and cheese, so if you are travelling vegan, it might end up being the rice and oily vegetables for meal after meal. If you risk eating at a non-vegetarian restaurant, the vegetarian menu usually consists of pizza and spaghetti. I should mention that it wasn’t all bad news, we did enjoy a veggie version of a traditional Arequipa dish (at a restaurant called Lakshmivan), a large pepper stuffed with vegetables, tofu and chillies, as well as scrumptious burritos at the Hearts Café in Ollantaytambo.

Fall vegetables bring to mind the hearth, coziness, beautiful autumn colors, hearty food and interesting one dish and multi-dish menus. We think about roasting, caramelizing, thick rich stocks, braising and sautéing when we think about the preparation of root vegetables and the other succulent vegetables which brighten up farm stands and markets all over the country at this time of the year.

I hope that all of you enjoy Fall Vegetables as much as I do. What’s fun about the change of seasons is that we are forced into creative ways to cook with the new bounty of the season. In this way, your food is never boring and you don’t get stuck eating the same foods day in and day out.

Sue Fishkoff’sKosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority (Schocken Books) doesn’t come out until October, but I was lucky enough to get a galley in advance. Frankly, what I enjoyed most about the book were topics I don’t have any particular reason to blog about: the true meaning of kosher wine, the globalization of kosher certification, how far people will go to make sure that insects aren’t in their food, and the life and times of a mashgiach. Fishkoff also has a great deal to say about the connections between vegetarianism and kashrut as well as kosher meat.

I might not agree with everything Fishkoff has to say, but she didn’t write an opinion-based eater’s manual. She’s a journalist who presented a very compelling, enlightening look at the scope of kashrut in 21st century America, and it’s a must-read for anyone interested in Jewish connections to food issues of any kind.

Weekdays are challenging when it comes to feeding a family. Getting the kids off to school with an energizing breakfast in their bellies and making it to work on time is tough. And by mid-afternoon when they get off the school-bus you know they’re going to be ready for a snack, regardless of what they ate for lunch. Making sure that your kids eat balanced and healthy meals that are still filled with flavor is no easy feat, but it can be done.

Last summer, after my patient Mrs. Price heard me say that her blood sugar was 204, a single tear ran down her cheek as she said, “My eldest granddaughter is getting married next year.” A blood sugar measurement over 200 is one way to confirm a diagnosis of diabetes. Her parents had both died in their 60’s from complications of chronically elevated high blood sugars. Here is what I told her.

As 5771 approaches, we look ahead with hope for a good and sweet year. Honey has been part of tradition for thousands of years, as exemplified by the age-old custom of using a taste of honey to encourage and reward young children for learning. What can be more delicious than dipping home-made breads, crackers or fruits into honey? And now honey has gotten even sweeter!